This thesis is about the life and work of Gertrude Bell, a British woman born in the late nineteenth century, whose extensive knowledge of Middle East cultures and people won her a job as the Oriental Secretary in Iraq after World War One. Modern historians, including Toby Dodge and Edward Said, consider Bell to be an irredeemable orientalist, one whose work is only ethnocentric and essentialist. Using the work of Billie Melman and Mohja Kahf, my aim is to contextualize Bell's work, and to see if, given the various circumstances in which she worked, a more sympathetic reading is not possible, and if perhaps Said and Dodge are not sometimes guilty of essentialism. I will also examine Said's theories in Orientalism, and though this thesis is in no way an attempt to discredit Said's work, I wish to pose a question; if one can take a small piece of the Orientalist puzzle (Bell's work) and shows that it differs from Said's description, does this undermine the idea of orientalism as a cohesive body of ideas?

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